I only had a couple Barbies when I was a kid, though to be honest the details are a little hazy. I always thought it was because my mom didn’t want me to play with them out of some feminist principle, and I took pride in that. But when I asked her recently, she said I just wasn’t that into playing with dolls, whether they were Barbie or not. She said I spent my time drawing, writing, reading, playing outside. This sounds right – I don’t really remember playing with toys in general that much. Unless it was Shrinky Dinks or an Easy Bake Oven, both of which I loved.
But I do remember having at least a couple Barbies, the heads of which my little brother liked to pop off to taunt me with (in the grand tradition of all little brothers). I had the Barbie camper, which I enjoyed playing with more than Barbie herself. I loved things like that, any kind of miniature, diorama, dollhouse-type thing. The first time I saw the Fairy Castle at the Museum of Science and Industry, I was enraptured. I could have gawked at it for hours, exploring every room and every detail and every accessory. (I still love these things, and if I ever lived in a home bigger than a New York City apartment, I’d for sure have a room dedicated to a dollhouse / miniaturist hobby.)
So, I could have cared less about Barbie herself, but I obviously longed for the Barbie Dream House, which I do remember my mom refusing to give in on. Much to my envy, my cousins had one, and I remember playing with them and the Dream House in their basement every time we went over to their house for dinner or a holiday. The fact that it was Barbie’s Dream House was irrelevant – I just wanted this very cool, very detailed miniature pink house to play with.
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I’m a Gen X child of the ‘90s, taking my first women’s studies class (I think they are now appropriately called “gender studies” but I have no idea because I haven’t been rooting around undergraduate course catalogs for more than 25 years) right as the second wave of feminism was dying down and the third wave was burgeoning. I’d never been exposed to feminist scholarship before my sophomore year in college, and I gobbled it all up. Everything made sense now. I came home for winter break that year and told my parents that they shouldn’t expect me to ever get married because marriage was a patriarchal institution (still kinda think that) and that even if I did ever get married, my dad would most certainly not be “giving me away.” They humored me and nodded their heads. (When I did get married years later, I held fast to this, having both of my parents walk me down the aisle. It backfired though, because the aisle was too narrow for both my parents and me in my very princess-y, very Barbie-approved, very beautiful, very big wedding dress. My mom had to walk behind my dad and me, completely defeating the whole point. But I tried!)
The 1990s was prime Barbie criticism era, and I’ve pretty much believed that “Barbie is bad” since then. No need to go into all the critiques – you likely are just as familiar as I am.
So before I saw the Barbie movie, I was prepared to, if not outright hate it, be disappointed at the very least. I was appalled at and exhausted by the ever-present marketing, and I texted a friend “I’m annoyed that we’re supposed to think Barbie is like a feminist icon now.”
And then I saw the movie. And while I’m not quite ready to hold up Barbie herself as a feminist icon, I’m ready to applaud Greta Gerwig in taking her rightful role in that pink pantheon. I positively loved this movie.
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Before I saw Barbie the second time (yes, I’ve seen it twice already), I was prepared to write this newsletter post about how sharp and funny it is in its take on the patriarchy and yada yada yada all the other pieces you’ve already read saying this.
And then when I was walking up the aisle in the theater after the end credits rolled for the second time, I noticed row upon row of women and girls, talking and laughing with each other. And that’s when I realized what had kept me thinking about this movie since I’d first seen it. I felt connected.
Last summer, the Dobbs decision left me and so many other women feeling angry and gutted. And while Barbie doesn’t fix the fact that half of the US population lost their constitutional right to control their own bodies, it did make me feel connected to every other woman in that theater and on the sidewalk and at work and on the subway and in the bodega and everywhere else. That’s Greta Gerwig’s magic trick I think. Despite living as a girl and woman in the patriarchy for 47 years, Barbie’s smart takedown of that system didn’t make me angry. It made me feel seen, it made me feel a sense of knowing of the universality of the experience of being a woman in the patriarchy. It was exhilarating.
All of these women in the theater know. The groups of younger women, eyes shining, so much of their adult lives ahead of them, so IN IT. The groups of older women, with their wisdom earned from a life lived, a wisdom I know they have because I have begun to feel it exponentially accumulate in myself lately. The little girls, asking their moms what a gynecologist is. The ones like me in the middle, teetering on that edge where everything behind you still feels tangible and close but everything in front of you is suddenly looming larger.
We’ve all been mansplained to. We’ve all been guitar’d at, either literally or figuratively. We’ve all, at some point, had to think about whether we want to have a child and have had to live with the beauty and ache of that choice and hope that our bodies, our families, our friends, our careers, our money, our insurance, our society, our dreams, our government would cooperate with that choice, whatever it was, and have had to pivot and adapt if one or more of those things didn’t cooperate.
So go see Barbie if you haven’t yet. Or go see Taylor Swift or Beyonce (if you can swing the pricey tix, of course), or Jenny Lewis on tour with her all-female band like I did a few weeks ago. Take your girlfriends, your wives, your moms, your daughters, your aunts, your sisters, your nieces. Laugh and cry, sing and dance.
Go somewhere and be in the company and comfort of other women. Then go back to your regular life and feel just slightly more fortified and a bit less alone in the daily struggles and joys. Because we all know.
I worked for The Body Shop while Anita Roddick was still alive, (Anita, much like Barbie, is not without controversy, but much less so than what Barbie became post-Ruth Handler, but anyway) I was drawn to the company’s products in high school, because they were high quality and because they did embraced political causes and ideals that aligned with my small town radical beliefs.
Later, when I was working for the company I loved that they provided low cost, high quality health insurance to even part time employees, additional benefits like paid time off for activism work, free mental health coverage (keep in mind this was a pre-“Obamacare” world where that was uncommon, and a real sense that even the lowest rung employees actually mattered.
No one at White Oaks Mall paid the store much attention until Ruby. The Love YOUR Body’s Campaign, conceived by Anita and executed by advertising powerhouse, Chiat\Day (Their first major ad campaign was the Apple “1984” commercial). The first storefront posters were groundbreaking as they featured women of all sized and ages, women with vitiligo, acne, scars, and all manner of things that would preclude their appearance in ads for a store selling beauty and skincare products. And more than a decade before Dove brought it to the mainstream. And then came Ruby.
She was a Rubenesque, nude, redheaded, Barbie Style doll reclining on a deep green fainting couch with the slogan “There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do.” People lost their minds. Suddenly I am getting contacted by the local affiliates of all 3 major television networks, mall management, 2 newspapers and multiple radio stations all wanting comment or change to the display poster all because of a naked, doll with the implication of being female. And I loved her.
I was basically ambushed by the local NBC affiliate before opening demanding comment on this “obscene” doll in a storefront display in the second smallest Body Shop Location in the United States. I somehow managed to remain calm but assertive during the interview, and managed to kill the story by taking the reporter and cameraman three stores down where Victoria’s Secret had similarly, if not larger posters, debuting their new line of either sheer or “comfortable” lace bras. Posters that featured actual human women, including more than one of the 8 aforementioned supermodels, wearing bras that allowed every mall shopper the opportunity to see their nipples.
After that it was a a constant stream of phone calls to corporate about their strategy to deal with an ever changing list of reasons a naked “Barbie” with curves was on display in a store, slightly larger than my parent’s walk in closet. We stood firm, other stores made Ruby swimsuits, others took the posters down entirely replacing them with a solid black poster with with type stating “censored by mall management”. Victoria’s Secret were never asked to change a thing.
It wasn’t for almost another decade before I learned that Les Wexner owned Limited Brands. Travel back to the mid 1990’s and every mall had a Limited, Express, Limited Too, Limited Men, Abercrombie & Fitch, White Barn Candle Company, Bath and Bodyworks, and Victoria’s Secret. Nearly a third to a half of non-anchor stores were Limited Brands. Maybe that’s part of the reason Victoria’s Secret was never asked to change a single window display.
Oh, and Les Wexner’s empire? It happened to be managed by a guy named Jeffrey Epstein. Maybe that had something to do with it too. In 2021 shareholders in L Brands filed a court complaint stating that Wexner, among others in the company, "entrenched culture of misogyny, bullying and harassment". I heard rumblings if this not only from fellow mall employees, but employees at various locations within headquarters in and around Columbus Ohio during my years living there.
It’s funny what people take umbrage with at the time, and what is truly outrageous 25, 35, or 70 years later.
I played with Barbie but Ken was mostly either thrown under the bed, off on an unspecified “business trip”, or was there to redecorate, replace the outlet in the kitchen of my second hand Dream House, or was making drinks and serving popsicles to Barbie and her friends while they discussed the stress of their high powered careers as astronauts, doctors, scientists, ballerinas, and President. They also talked about how scratchy and uncomfortable their fancy outfits were.
I don’t know if that would make my second wave Fore-Mothers proud or appalled.
Enjoying the insights, and the tales told here. I'm seeing BARBIE this week. The one thing I don't wish washed over, with no fault of anyone, is that Greta's first "directed" film is NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS which she made with my friend Joe Swanberg. I think the project might be a bit complicated for them to talk about now (and that's nonsensical) but it is what it is — a great movie (NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS). Shoot me a note Nikki; I'm all the way in Arizona badlands..